Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Smoke on the Water World Record

REUTERS

Let there be rock: 1,800 guitarists play "Smoke on the Water" in Germany to set a new world record.Germans love hard rock, and they love to rock out with electric guitars. So it was appropriate that a new rocktastic world record for the largest number of people playing guitar simultaneously would be set in the land where the mullet has never gone out of fashion.

Exactly 1,802 hard-rocking guitarists set a new world record on Saturday evening in the town of Leinfelden-Echterdingen in the German state of Baden-Württemberg by simultaneously playing the Deep Purple rock classic "Smoke on the Water."

The rockers broke the previous world record for most simultaneous renditions of a rock song which had been set at the beginning of June in Kansas City in the US, where 1,683 guitarists got down and riffed together.

Deep Purple singer Ian Gillan was going to take part in a live link-up from England, but was prevented from singing along by technical problems. Meanwhile fellow Deep Purple band member Jon Lord sent his congratulations via email.

Amateur and professional musicians aged from six to 80 from Germany and abroad took part in the record attempt. Crash courses in playing "Smoke on the Water" were available for those about to rock who weren't quite sure of the notes.

If the record is not exceeded by September, the record will go into the Guinness Book of Records, said organizer Andreas Vockrodt. Vockrodt had set the same record back in 1995 with 356 guitarrists, which stood until 2003.

The riff from the Deep Purple song "Smoke on the Water," which tells the story of the burning down of the Montreux Casino in 1971, is famous for being one of the first things most wannabe guitarists learn to play.